Thursday, May 22, 2014

I've been watching Glory kickboxing and while I am rather impressed with this new promotion, both in terms of the calibre of fighters in their roster and the quality of the shows they put on at such an early stage in their existence I think that the single day tournament format they employ might need to be reconsidered, the unique excitement and drama it brings notwithstanding. The tournament format is one of the reasons that I love Bellator MMA so much (although it's not a single day tournament) so I definitely do understand the reasoning behind Glory's use of it but after watching several of their events I am starting to question the wisdom behind the single day tournament format.

One of the things that has become clear is that a single day tournament is often times simply unfair. In almost every case, the fighters who made it to the final fight had totally different experiences along the way which invariably left one fighter in a much better position to fight than the other. Even the very best fighter in the roster could be in an underdog position, at least informally, in a fight against the last ranked fighter simply because his first fight went the distance (or close to it) while his opponent's fight ended within two minutes and as such he is undamaged and has a full gas tank while his opponent is battered and exhausted (or at least much further along the path to exhaustion than is his opponent). Clearly this would mean that the lower ranked guy will have a huge advantage over his opponent in the finals; isn't that statement alone enough to convince you that something is amiss? In this system a fresh fighter fighting a guy who is three quarters of the way to exhaustion right from the opening bell isn't a freak occurrence but a regularity. It's remarkably unfair.

Monday, March 25, 2013

An atheist and a theist engage in a friendly debate about the topic of god; specifically, whether or not one exists. The crux of the atheists' argument is essentially that the evidence for the existence of a god is lacking and has not led to the acceptance (on the part of said atheist) of the hypothesis that such a being exists. The theists' bottom line sentiment is that the evidence is sufficient for people all around the world (him or herself included) and it is up to the atheist to accept this evidence/open their heart/be open minded etc (there are many platitudes that are used in this situation).

This discussion has taken place innumerable amounts of times throughout history, and I don't see any reason to believe that it will not continue to do so for at least the foreseeable future. What I find particularly striking about this fact is that the existence of god is one of the few topics for which it is acceptable to claim that the burden of belief/being convinced lies not on the strength of the evidence put forth to bolster the claim but rather on the target(s) of said claims. A few other topics for which this is true are UFO's, bigfoot and the Illuminati/New World Order. Would anyone care to venture a guess as to what it is that these topics have in common?

There is no proof that any of them exist (none of them do in my not so humble opinion).